The Great Oppression

For a band who like to play fast, Sacrificial Slaughter leave a hell of a long time between releases. I liked this album much more instinctively than their earlier Spontaneous Suicide, partly because it sounds rather like Ghoul (who are crazy and awesome) in its devious drops into lightning fast and catchy riffing, but also partly because the intervening four years saw the band finding more hooks, losing some excess flab, and generally finding their niche as sort-of-serious but sort-of-horrid practitioners of gore and death. Check out the lyrics to 'Debaucherizor' if you don't believe me.

In any case, The Great Oppression is still a mix of death and thrash metal, though slightly impure like Ghoul or the idiotically unspellable Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, plus a little bit of grindcore, which makes sense given that the song lengths frequently dip below three minutes and everything changes on a dime in prime Pig Destroyer style. (I just typed Pug Destroyer by accident: please someone make this band happen.) There is also a more prominent groove dimension to the riffing and more of a melodic sensibility that gives a mere 27 minute album a lot of possibilities and scope. The songs that show this huge range of characteristics, such as 'Compound Fracture', are very well-formed too, rarely descending into the madness of genre-mashing, but instead incorporating all those elements into a capacious production that remains brutal while allowing the whole drum kit to glimmer through beneath the fucking massive deathly guitars.

The band's decision to place a great many more and better (butcher's) hooks into the mixture satisfies all the more considering that the heaviness is rarely compromised, Steve Worley roaring through the slashing riffs in a more audible manner, so that the smattering of choruses stick out strongly, as do the jokes, like the line about "this liquid is my saviour" in '80 Proof Justice', which, like 'Debaucherizor', turns out to be a hymn to booze. My personal favourite, however, must absolutely be the more melodic (though still terrifically fast and Ghoul-ish) 'Necrotic Exposure', a song that shows just how fun and face-damaging death metal can be when done by the right people. That said, there aren't any boring cuts, as one would hope from the brevity of the release, while reasons for celebrating are most obvious in 'Reign of the Hammer' and 'Communion of Lies', as well as the previously mentioned 'Compound Fracture' and 'Necrotic Exposure', all of which are unsuitable for listening to on the bus, as my fellow travelers have just discovered.

As a result of being dangerous for public transport, The Great Oppression is definitely worthy of all the more listening in your own private time, preferably as loudly as possible and accompanied by a beverage similar to the one described in '80 Proof Justice'. It's just a shame that it took four more years to deliver a follow-up and that was only an EP, though of pretty good quality. Nevertheless, The Great Oppression certainly deserves to be called great.